Archive for the 'Websites' Category

Dumbledore is gay

Published
by
Austen
on October 22, 2007
in Books and Websites
. 6 Comments

From The Leaky Cauldron via Gothamist:

Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?
JKR: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. [...] He was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how I always saw Dumbledore.

When I read this I though, oh - ok. Interesting that J.K. Rowling thinks that. Well, I guess that it makes sense. Which I think is a perfectly reasonable reaction. Wow, he’s gay. Big deal. The books haven’t changed, they haven’t been rewritten. It’s just the author’s opinion. Nothing wrong with that.

Aparently not. From a comment on the Gothamist post:

I am a christian who supported these books as they brought the joy of reading back to sooooo many kids and adults. I have read all the books and thoroughly enjoyed them. I argued with all my christian friends who put down these books and supported the Narnia books.

Now, I will make sure I throw away all the copies I have, and no one in my family will ever read that trash again. I will also advise anyone who asks not to let their kids read these books, which is an absolute turnaround from where I was [...] Not only has she destroyed a great hero, but she has tarnished the entire series.

Wow. Let’s see… has anything changed in the books? Did J.K. Rowling revise them so that it’s evident that Dumbledore is gay? Did she give him a boyfriend in the book??? No! The books are exactly the same! But now that the author thinks that a character she created is probably gay, the books are all of the sudden evil.

Oh yeah - that makes perfect sense. Let’s burn the Harry Potter books just because one of the characters is gay in the author’s mind. Not because of how Harry is orphaned as a child, and is witness to dozens of murders. That’s not a big deal, it’s ok. As long as there aren’t any gay characters, Children can read the book. </sarcastic>

Are Tumblelogs a fad?

Published
by
Austen
on July 4, 2007
in Technology and Websites
. 1 Comment

Tumblelogs are basically mini-blogs. They’re the direct content of a blog, minus the commentary. Most blogs out there are really just portals to other content, usually adding their on commentary. Tumblelogs simplify that, providing only the link. It can be a link, a photo, a video, a quote, etc.

While in theory, I think that Tumblelogs are a good idea I think that it doesn’t leave any room for someone to be themselves. In the end, all it is is a collection of links. When you commentate on these links in a blog you really make it unique.

Above is the Tumblr (a popular tumblelog creator) admin interface

A popular feature of Tumblr is the ability to aggregate feeds into your Tumblelog. This basically means that you’re combining lots of different content from other places on the internet into one place. Examples of feeds to aggregate include Flickr photos, Twitter statuses, Last.fm music, etc. And ironically, even blog posts. So a alot of Tumblelogs kind of turn into dumping grounds for all of your information online. Sort of a one-stop place. Unfortunately, I already have a one-stop place: Netsua.

But I went on and created one anyway. Tumblr is cool. It’s like Wordpress, yet much simpler. It’s fun and easy to use, but not very powerful. And here’s my tumblelog, entitled Mr. Squarepants’s Tumblelog. It’s not much. As I said, it’s just a dumping ground for all of my other things. I was inspired by Aaron’s, of course which he put a bit more work into.

So what do you think of Tumblelogs? I think that they’re a fad, but that’s what people were saying about blogging a few years ago, and now it’s seems to be here to stay. So are Tumblelogs a fad, or a newer generation of (mini) blogging?

On an unrelated note, happy birthday to my Mom!

WordPress for non-blog websites (link)

Published
by
Austen
on July 1, 2007
in Technology and Websites
. 3 Comments

I found a very interesting article over at ifacethoughts.net:

A friend wants to develop a corporate web site and wanted to get my advice on what CMS he should use. The website he envisoned was one of the simple ones [where] he was not exposed to any web site management before or [...] raw HTML. I advised him to use WordPress for it. However, he knew that WordPress was a blogging engine and felt that I was trying to tackle him cheaply.

I have encountered a very similar situation, and got pretty much the same reaction. Everyone thinks that since Wordpress was meant to make blogs, that that’s all it can do. But it’s not. I think that this site alone is an example of how Wordpress can be turned into a regular website.

The article explains this in great detail, and it’s a very good read for those reluctant to build their websites with Wordpress. The main reasons, as outlined in the article, are:

  • Of course, the page function
  • A wide vareity of tweakable themes
  • Permalink functionality
  • Easy-to-use
  • Free and Open Source

And if you read the comments, lots of people seem to agree that Wordpress is probably the best way to make a basic website because it’s easy, free, and very easy to extend with plugins.

What do you think? Is Wordpress good enough to work as a website creation tool, or does it still lack the features that other services do? Tell me in the comments!

50 signs you’re a blogaholic (link)

Published
by
Austen
on June 14, 2007
in Websites
. 0 Comments

Awesome list. Here are some of my favorites:

  • Your family don’t call anymore, they just check your blog. (Haha - Uncle Bob and Grandma and Grandpa)
  • You think Nike should make a shirt that says “just blog it”.
  • You would buy it if they did.
  • You’re listening to the travel news and get excited by the phrase “heavy traffic”.
  • You think “I wonder how this’ll look on Flickr?” when posing for photos. (All the time.)
  • When asked to feed the dog, you think “RSS or Atom?”
  • You include ownership of your blog in your will
  • You finish reading this and go to make a post with your own additions… :-)

- From JonathanDeamer.com

Yep, here are my own:

  • You don’t go on any websites anymore, you just check your RSS feeds.
  • You know what a Tumblelog is.
  • You have one.
  • You instinctively read “weblog” as “we-blog” instead of “web-log”

Website Grader: Finally, a test I can feel good about

Published
by
Austen
on June 7, 2007
in Netsua.com and Websites
. 1 Comment

I tested out Netsua.com at websitegrader.com (thanks Blogg-Buzz) and got (I think) pretty good results…

  • In terms of “marketing effectiveness,” Netsua scores higher than 71% compared to the 35,000 other websites that have been submitted.
  • Alexa.com thinks that this site is the “7,151,297th most trafficked site on the web.”
  • The readability level is 4th grade… um, yeah that’s not great but I’m not exactly writing Shakespeare here.

Website Grader is a really cool tool that allows you to get information about your website that doesn’t really say anything, but that sounds cool and easily gets gobbled up by bloggers.

Dunder Mifflin Website

Published
by
Austen
on May 19, 2007
in Websites
. 0 Comments

Dunder Mifflin is the fictional paper supply company that the characters work at in The Office, a popular TOTALLY AWESOME show about, well, characters working for Dunder Mifflin.

Anyway, aside from telling you to go out and buy the first 2 seasons on DVD now, I’m also telling you that this afternoon I whipped up a little website using the popular TOTALLY AWESOME open source program Nvu.

It’s really not much, just a basic table set-up with the Dunder Mifflin logo and me blabbering on about “quality paper” and “customer service representatives.” But I believe that if Dunder Mifflin were real that this is a pretty fair representation of what their website would look like.

Dunder Mifflin - Paper Products Supply Co.

On an unrelated note, nobody has posted any comments for like 10 posts! Please comment it you have anything to say, because I value your opinions and like to hear other views about stuff.

Thanks Mike for alerting me to the problem with the AJAX commenting. I’ve disabled it, and it seems to work now. Sorry about that.